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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29643672">Saint of Some Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaponized/pseuds/Weaponized'>Weaponized</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Pride and Prejudice Fusion, Alternate Universe - Regency, Bondage, But it's romantic, Dirty Talk, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Poetry may put paid to any vague inclination of love Miss Bennett but it is feast for kink, Romance, Romantic Poetry, Romantic bondage, Spanking, Unsafe sex: Regency Edition, Wax Play, no seriously, vaguely inspired by Pride and Prejudice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 20:35:54</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>15,392</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29643672</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weaponized/pseuds/Weaponized</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Arrange yourself, my study. Your hellish expression will harrow me all night long and I fear that not even the absurd volume of punch my mother is insisting upon will be enough to raise your spirits.</i>
</p><p>It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Steve Rogers of Chatsworth House is single—supposedly—and in possession of good fortune. However, the matrons of Devonshire society are to be eternally disappointed, as Mister Rogers’ heart already has a seal stamped upon it.</p><p><b>OR</b> Steve and Bucky in a regency romance absolutely stuffed with pride, prejudice and... kink.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>154</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Saint of Some Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>When the eternal <a href="https://twitter.com/elkleggs">elkleggs</a> creates art like the images below, who am I to resist the overwhelming urge to write. Behold, Steve Rogers striding through the morning mist towards his lover to confess his affections.</p><p>The utmost limits of my esteem to Elk for enthusing over this fic as I wrote it, and to my lovely betas <a href="https://twitter.com/sublimepigeon">Pigeon</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/brokenintowords">BrokenWords</a>, they are all sublime.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>

</p>
</div>Hot, it was so hot. The windows were flung open and the French doors were a revolving flurry of bustles, and yet the room and the crowd were a merry vice on Steve throat. The usually airy grandeur of the great foyer and its neighbouring ballroom was a distant memory as crowds of well-dressed folk paraded around and the musicians gallery presided over the frackas with relentless ardour. The whole thing was entirely uncalled for. Miserable, even.<p>And yet there, in the center of the throng, a charming smile on his serene face and a lovely girl on each arm, was Bucky. His fluffy curls alone were causing at least a dozen matrons to flutter, never mind the way he wore his cravat—as if he might be able to rip it off at any moment, exposing his throat to the room and assigning his good name to the dust.</p><p>Society was truly beyond comprehension.</p><p>That did not stop Steve from attending, however. It had never stopped him from attending even one of the private balls thrown at the small, yet beautifully appointed home of the Barnes family. The Buchanan estate ran adjacent to his own home, Chatsworth, where he rattled around in complete contrast to this house, where Bucky seemed to exist cushioned on every side by his multitude of lovely sisters and an aunt or two.</p><p>“Mister Rogers, good heavens, but you look ever so miserable.” Rebecca, the very image of her brother, only with slightly neater hair and less of a compunction for laughing so raucously, took up residence on the patch of wall by his side. She peered into the crowd, “Ah, I see, he is teasing you again. How very bad of him,” she laughed.</p><p>Steve broke out of his studied lack of interest to give Rebecca a crisp bow, “Good evening Miss Barnes.”</p><p>“You shan’t ask me to dance?” Becca continued to smile, an expression which usually won her as many dances as her brother indulged in. “Ah but you dislike dancing, isn’t that right. I forgot, you merely come here to soak yourself in something else, not merriment and good cheer like the rest of us.”</p><p>And with that, the dance ended in a storm of applause and Becca Barnes evaporated into the crowd, her height and striking choice of purple dress parting the crowd before her in a flurry of bowing gentlemen. There were always plenty of engaging gentlemen available for the daughters of the Barnes household to dance with, for although their home was modest in comparison to the cavernous halls of Chatsworth next door, the family had ample fortune and the girls’ father spent every winter in town without fail, engaged with his seat in the House of Lords and knee deep in business. Bucky, meanwhile, usually stayed in Derbyshire, immune entirely to the pleading of his mother to <i>please</i> come to town and at least attempt an evening at the Assembly.</p><p>Bucky preferred to dance here, in the great and tall room where he had been dancing since he was old enough to stand. And sometimes he preferred to dance in Steve’s ballroom. When the occasion allowed.</p><p>Steve stood, a rock buffeted by the waves, and thought of the words he had read and re-read that morning.</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>Arrange yourself, my study. Your hellish expression will harrow me all night long and I fear that not even the absurd volume of punch my mother is insisting upon will be enough to raise your spirits. She must know that her ball will once again be presided over by the sternest of your scowls, and that there is nothing she can do about it. She’s been arranging your moods into the decor for at least five consecutive seasons now, I’m sure that soon you shall have your own chair in the corner with the spinsters. She hasn’t yet gone to such lengths, as she still has a faint hope that you shall marry Becca and become master of almost all of Derbyshire.</i>
  </p>
  <p>
    <i>Wait for me tomorrow, I promise your fury won’t go unpunished.</i>
  </p>
  <p>
    <i>Your Bucky</i>
  </p>
</blockquote>The note, sealed with the outrageous, deep red wax which Bucky always used, had been waiting for him on his plate that very morning. Bucky must have written it the night before and sent it with the dawn. He was a master of correspondence, just as he was a master of conversation and a limitlessly generous host. All these unbearable things which Steve could—and would not ever be able to separate from him. The very essence of his unbearable existence.<p>“I see that later will not be soon enough,” said a low voice in his ear, and Steve found himself on the receiving end of a grey and sparkling stare.</p><p>Bucky was dressed in a jacket so severely tailored and in such a fiercely rich velvet that it put at least half of the gowns in the room to shame. It was all Steve could do not to place his hand on the broad back of Bucky’s shoulder and spread his fingers, feeling the soft nap which had no doubt taken on the heat of Bucky’s dancing. His smoothly shaved jaw was framed by the silk of his cravat, white, brimmed to the perfect degree by his starched collar points. Beneath it there was the softest shadow, a lingering smudge of blue beneath his ear. The remnants of something Steve had inflicted several nights previous. It was almost more than he could endure not to reach out and push those folds of silk away, to resist pressing his nail to the purple speckled and dusky blue bruise which he had left there with his teeth.</p><p>“May I presume,” Bucky’s grin was filled with a casual merriment to which Steve could never compare, “that you will not be consoled by my trifling notes or conversation today. I shall have to engage you in something much more serious. Come to the library with me, won’t you? We shall drink a glass of port.”</p><p>Bucky stopped at least a thousand times on the way to the staircase. Every pause was a pernicious betrayal to Steve’s mood to the point that when Bucky was waylaid by a brightly garnished lady topped by at the most ridiculous hairdo Steve had ever seen, he merely continued on without him, taking refuge in the dim recesses of the second floor and it’s library. The lamps were lit and a fire was banked in the hearth. Bucky’s father had the estate office and had no interest in reading, so the library had become Bucky’s domain rather early, for a guiltless flirt. But the truth was, Bucky loved books and loved to immerse himself in the warmth of paper leaves more than almost anything. Steve knew.</p><p>The large table was laden with maps. The familiar lie of the local land plotted neatly and inked to the finest detail. Steve spotted the stick of wax and Bucky’s carelessly abandoned seal beside the stacks of notes and folded cartography. He had sat here last night and penned the note Steve had in his pocket. The note he really should have burned the moment he read it, but truthfully he had come to need the tiny leaves of Bucky’s affection more and more. He felt like he might suddenly open his hands and unwillingly let what they had together float away, clumsy and foolish as he was. How could he dare to hang on?</p><p>The door opened and closed with a soft and final click. Steve continued to stare down at the seal he had picked up, rolling the little gold head between his fingers. It was detailed to the very enth degree with filigrees and useless detail, depicting Bucky’s initials, ‘JB’ in a flowery script.</p><p>“What, precisely, have I done to offend you this time, my great mystery?”</p><p>Bucky’s voice was filled with the kind of gentleness he saved specifically for occasions such as these, and Steve hated him for that in the deepest and most shameful part of his heart. He slowly put the seal down.</p><p>“Perhaps I have done nothing, and thinking I am somehow the cause of your gruffness is sheer vanity. But even so, you have allowed me to cosset you away here in my library, so I’m holding a stout hope that I might be able to help… improve your mood.”</p><p>Steve drummed his fingers on the table. “How shocking.”</p><p>Bucky crossed the room with a bold tilt to his head, “Oh Mister Rogers. Shocked you, have I?”</p><p>Steve gave him a flat look, unwilling to play along with whatever cheering games Bucky was attempting. “Buck. Stop playing with me.”</p><p>“Alright,” Bucky’s fingers met the opposite edge of the table from where Steve stood, “no more of my games. No more of your gruffness.”</p><p>The firelight lit Bucky’s face, settling in the hollows of his cheeks and dancing in his eyes. Outside, in the heat and frivolity, he had been full and ripe—a smiling and bountiful thing. But now he stood frankly, leaning towards Steve, his face free from smiles or benevolence or even kindness. Much easier for Steve to see.</p><p>“Buck,” he said again, leaning over the table, too, “how long do you plan to keep me dangling at the tips of your fingers?” He didn’t mean for his voice to sound so fierce when he said it, but somehow, he felt his own words kill the warmth of the room stone dead.</p><p>Bucky’s expression did not change, however, he merely straightened, and brought both hands to his throat where he began to loosen the knots of his cravat with nimble plucks of his fingers until the lengths of it lay down his lapels and his collar fell open to reveal the remnants of three-day-old love. There were pink smudges and deep blue dots left right down his neck to his collarbone. The fingers paused for a moment, ensuring Steve got a good look, before Bucky continued to unbutton himself, tugging at the buttons of his snug jacket with a single-minded purpose that almost—almost—made Steve want to take back his harsh words.</p><p>Once his jacket was discarded on the worn leather chair which stood at the edge of the fire’s glowing light, Bucky began to rip at his waistcoat, the audible tearing of the threads a painful rebuke. “Once upon a time I really believed that you only wanted to increase the strength of my love by trying to turn it down. All the huffing and puffing, the insecurity. The pride.”</p><p>Steve already felt shame burning in the recesses of his gut, but he tipped his chin up, determined to stand firm.</p><p>Bucky’s large eyes widened. “But now I know better.” The waistcoat dropped to the rug. “I know that your pride doesn’t prevent you from loving me. But it does make you fear losing me.”</p><p>Steve couldn’t stay silent any longer, especially with the increasing expanses of lovely flesh being revealed to him. “I fear that other things might cause you to be lost to me,” he said, obstinately.</p><p>His words glanced off Bucky’s gloriousness like raindrops off a petal.</p><p>“Other things,” he said in a tone which only said that gentleness was about to be cast aside entirely.</p><p>Steve licked his lips. “Yes, I fear losing you because you are all the things which I am not. I know you better than anyone else, and I know every one of your motivations. What am I supposed to think when every season, for the entire season, you are entirely at the beck and call of every eligible woman in the county? Is this not an exquisitely orchestrated opportunity which every year drags you further away from me? Unlike you, I do not have the talent for conversing with people I have no interest in.”</p><p>Steve felt his voice fail in his throat when Bucky’s shirt fell open, revealing the long, velvety expanse of his chest and stomach and the hint of a dusky pink nipple.</p><p>“Are you finished?”</p><p>Steve supposed that the heaviness that prevented him from raising his eyes from that sliver of fire-lit skin meant that he was.</p><p>Bucky raised his hand to plunge his fingers into his fluffy mass of glossy dark curls, displaying a little slice more of his smooth, contoured abdomen. He glanced at the door, as if to reassure himself that it really was locked. “Steve, I love you,” he said, softly enough that even a nosy matron with her whole face pressed against the door outside wouldn’t be able to hear them, “and I will go on loving you for my whole life. But what we have is not compatible with the society we live in, you know that.”</p><p>Steve did know that, which was the only thing preventing him from petulantly sticking out his lower lip and shaking his big, stupid head. Instead he just looked down at his own hands where they lay flat against the paper of Bucky’s beautifully annotated maps.</p><p>He was so absorbed in controlling his own sulky gaze that he startled when Bucky’s elegant, smooth arms, clad only in the skin-warmed cotton of his shirt, came to slide along his own. He was filled with life and strength, even if the width of his biceps was nothing compared to the bulk which strained the seams of Steve’s black evening jacket. Nevertheless, it was with no small measure of determination that Bucky clasped Steve’s wrists in his hands, tucking the rough, hard flesh of his palms under the silken edges of his white cuffs. Warm breath whispered on the back of Steve’s ear, and he swore that he felt the very air evaporate from around him as Bucky stole it, sucked it in and squandered it.</p><p>Lips brushed his jaw. “Steve,” Bucky whispered, “how many times will you lose trust in me? Why can’t I make you believe me?”</p><p>Steve believed. He believed too much.</p><p>He tried to resist the wicked things that Bucky’s filthy mouth had begun suggesting against his neck, but it was difficult in the extreme. Not least because it was on this body that Bucky had learned every one of his tricks, and it was on this poor body that he continued to use them. Steve made a long, slow sigh, trying not to let his breathlessness show. “Buck, I know,” he was all he managed.</p><p>It was enough to have Bucky’s lips seal tight to the soft, torturous place below Steve’s ear where gentle kisses and laps of a kittenish tongue drove him wild. Sensations began to crowd each other through his brain like puppies chasing one another’s tails, and before he knew it, he had leaned back into Bucky’s embrace like a rowan bending in the breeze. Bucky began to hum in appreciation, tucking himself tight into the broad plane of Steve’s back and reciprocating with warm enthusiasm, the evidence of his pleasure pressing into Steve’s behind.</p><p>A flurry of laughter struck the warm air from right outside the door and Steve flinched, but Bucky was already there, soothing with his fingers firm on the inside of each flexed wrist. “Shh,” he soothed, “this is just you and I, Steve. No one will come between us.”</p><p>Steve felt himself melt a little more, but resisted the urge to flip their embrace and shove Bucky down over the map table like he probably wanted. “So this is how it will always be,” he spoke to the fireplace, gazing into the flame as Bucky’s lips and hands lit a fire in his belly. “Always you, out there, in the midst, and always me, in here, alone.”</p><p>Bucky stopped his ministrations and rested his chin on Steve’s shoulder. “If that’s how it has to be, yes. Or is there something else you desire from me? Tell me what it is. I’ll probably do it for you.” His voice was flat, opaque. It was impossible for Steve to divine his feelings. He knew what Bucky’s teasing or anger sounded like, but this wasn’t that, it was more like an unwanted truth.</p><p>Steve disengaged and turned slowly, lowering himself to sit on the edge of the table so that Bucky stood between his spread thighs. A devastating lock of rich brown hair had come loose from its place and fell into the cool gaze which Steve couldn’t help but notice was all the frostier for the man Bucky professed to love than it ever was for the horde of company that sweated conversation and charm on the dance floor.</p><p>“I am not a man capable of infinite patience,” Steve said, raising his hand to brush the backs of his knuckles against the apex of Bucky’s cheekbone, cool, but for the reflection of the orange lamplight. “In fact I’m a man barely capable of patience at all. You know that.”</p><p>Bucky pulled his face backwards from the glancing touch, tilting his chin upwards with a shivering breath, “When did I ever expect patience from you? I know better than to ask for the impossible.”</p><p>“Perhaps that’s it. You don’t ask for the impossible, and so I don’t—I find it hard to believe that you actually want it. The impossible.” Steve chased Bucky’s cheek, fitting his large hand into the soft planes of it.</p><p>Warmth blossomed in Bucky’s eyes at last, amusement. And Steve couldn’t stop the way his fingers tightened, tipping Bucky’s face into the lamplight to see it sparkle beneath his lashes.</p><p>“You’re laughing at me,” he growled.</p><p>Bucky’s lips twitched, “I am not,” he gasped.</p><p>Steve used the thick grasp he had on soft hair to drag their faces close together. “You are. My favourite laugh in all the world,” he breathed over Bucky’s damp, parted lips, so ready to be kissed.</p><p>So Steve did, kiss him that is. And Bucky reciprocated with enthusiasm, pressing all ten of his fingertips through the taut silk that stretched over Steve’s thighs. The kiss tasted of milk punch and whisky, the very detestable fabric of Steve’s evening, and yet when Bucky’s tongue slid against his and their mingled breath began to warm into something that was almost panting, Steve forgot to care.</p><p>He felt Bucky let his shirt slide to the floor, took the invitation for what it was and dared to place his hands on the smooth sleekness of a well muscled waist. Their lips parted with a longing breath from both sides. Bucky resisted when Steve tried to pull him more snuggly into their embrace, however, offering only his cheek to kiss.</p><p>“Steve, I want all your impossibles. I wish we could live together sleeping in your great bed in that ridiculous house, waking up to the sound of the curtains being opened by your frighteningly efficient housekeeper.”</p><p>Steve continued to press his lips to Bucky’s face, listening.</p><p>“And I wish that I could stand by the fire in all our friend’s drawing rooms after dinner, agreeing that yes, I have made an enviable match, while Becca plays the pianoforte and you discuss the favourable shipping investments of the season,” a tinge of wistfulness edged Bucky’s words. “But it’s impossible—and unlike you, I understand what impossible means. However–” he was cut off by Steve’s lips smothering him once again.</p><p>After he had thoroughly kissed the will to speak off Bucky’s lips, Steve smoothed his hands up his long, bare spine. Steve took over, “However, you’re willing to lead me in here in the midst of your infernal ball and sit in my lap like we’re in some kind of saloon, and I should be grateful for that,” he muttered.</p><p>Bucky stepped back out of Steve’s arms, pushing away from their embrace and leaving him to drop his palms slowly, the warmth of skin evaporating along with the heat of their exchange. His face was thunderous. He bent to snatch his shirt off the floor and turned away from Steve to put it on.</p><p>“I was about to say that it doesn’t matter what impossible means because—because clearly it isn’t impossible for me to feel this way about you and that’s enough. But I take it back. I take it back, Steve, because you are a cold and callous bastard, and I don’t have the relentless energy to persuade you night after night that spring follows winter.”</p><p>Steve pushed himself off the table and pulled himself up to his full height. “I see how it is. It’s alright for you to pretend I don’t exist when it suits you, but I’m a monster for suggesting that this, clandestine and untoward as it is, isn’t how it should be between us?”</p><p>Bucky spun around, finding Steve much closer than he had expected, and stumbled back. “What do you <i>want</i> from me? You want me to become as cold and distant as you? Spurn the company of anyone other than my sworn secret lover? Wait for you forever as we continue to exist in an icy parallel, walking side by side through our lives but unable to bridge the gap for fear of being <i>untoward</i>? I’m never allowed to kiss you until I can somehow transform into a woman and <i>marry you</i>?”</p><p>Steve caught the shoulder that hadn’t yet been concealed by Bucky’s tangled shirt. “No,” he said loudly. Forcing the fire down from his throat, “No,” he whispered.</p><p>The fire crackled and the sound of voices rising from the foyer and the terrace outside seemed to swell and press in upon them. The dim cocoon of the library cloyed at Steve’s frustration. He hated that his mouth had betrayed his shameful thoughts yet again, but standing before Bucky, his heart was so full the emotions seemed to spill out of him in great rivers. Landing him here, under the crystallizing heat of a grey gaze; the location of all his greatest blunders, and all his greatest victories.</p><p>He thought Bucky might kiss him again. The air crackled with the need for it, a fire lit by which of them, Steve couldn’t tell. But Bucky did not kiss him. He knocked Steve’s hand from his shoulder instead and struggled to right the ruin of his clothes, continuing to pin Steve under his furious look while he buttoned and knotted, shrugging his waistcoat on. His dark lashes pinched into a narrow glare at the way Steve’s eyes flicked down to his waist, betrayed by his own desire for the tight, warm snugness of the body which lay beneath.</p><p>“Degrade me, all while you look at me like that.” There was no warmth in Bucky’s laugh now. “Thank you, my love.”</p><p>“Bucky,” Steve tried to speak but the apology was thick in his throat.</p><p>Then Bucky was gone, bowing like an actor leaving the stage before slipping away, back through the door into the throng outside. Back to his bright and gay world of dancing and flirting.</p><p>Steve slammed his hands into the table in frustration, hating himself and the poison that lived on his tongue. He allowed himself a single curse, an indulgence, though it seemed far less of an injury than any of the rest of his words this evening. He wasn’t a bitter man, and yet he had stewed himself in all the things he couldn’t have and thrown the resulting brew in Bucky’s sweet face. What was Bucky supposed to do about the fact that they had fallen in love in spite of the society they lived in? Why could he not simply love the way love laid its path for him? Instead he was always pulling the very ground from beneath Bucky’s feet, leaving him to try and cope alone, which he did, because he was far stronger than Steve would ever be.</p><p>The map was smooth and soothing on his hot palms. Just a piece of paper full of information. Bucky had drawn it, he saw now, using the palette and quill that were discarded on a ragged sheet of linen paper well to the right of all the more pristine sheets. It was splattered with droplets of paint and ink, mostly in the mossy green and rich blue which were the maps’ colour scheme, but beneath the top layer of discarded colour was written Steve’s name.</p><p>Leaning over, he gently pushed aside the white feathered pens and a few paint brushes to reveal multitude notes and dummy sketches. And written over it all in rich black ink, two stanzas.<br/>
</p>
<p></p><blockquote>
  <p>
    <i>Saint of some man, at the peak of all stands,<br/>
With his back to any sense and his heart open.<br/>
O, what heinous things I’d do for that man<br/>
Beyond him, all sense and pride are broken</i>
  </p>
  <p>
  <i>Steven, put upon me your grievous thoughts,<br/>
For love can bear any weight and any insult.</i></p>
</blockquote><p>Bucky’s familiar hand was clear to him despite the mess of ink blotches. Steve read the poem, the first time inhaling greedily; the second, admiring the neat words. By the third pass, he lingered on his own name.</p><p>“Oh, Buck,” Steve put his hand over his eyes. He had been so cruel.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>✧✦✧</p>
</div>The ball went on all night. Bucky’s parents and sisters were bright points of laughter and contentment around the house, charming the throng of guests and soothing the usual cracks which divided any community. Their home was large and welcoming, yet thanks to the imposing presence of the Chatsworth estate next door, they had never suffered from quite the same level of bowing and scraping that Steve had grown up with his whole life. Instead, people told Bucky’s mother their news whenever they saw her, and his sisters had so much acquaintance, every one spent her morning every day answering correspondence. The house was never quieter than the two hours following the mail delivery.<p>The Barnes’ knew all, and loved to listen. That was probably why it was scraping the grey hours of dawn by the time the butler shut and latched the front door, ushering the last yawning footman to bed as soon as the curtains were drawn. The chambermaids would be up soon to light the fires and make the house ready for the day again, but in the two hours interim, the house would be silent and asleep.</p><p>Bucky stepped onto the terrace through the French windows, making a clean escape. The grass of the lawn was frosted, crunching under his boots. He wore a long riding coat over his loose shirt and trousers—a very different outfit to his earlier one. He had avoided everyone for the rest of the evening after Steve had so delicately broken him open and seared his insides.</p><p>Bucky looked up at the pale blue sky, almost white, and enjoyed the cold dawn air on his flushed cheeks as he made his way beyond the neat parts of the garden and onto the hillside. He had percolated on thoughts about Steve for the rest of the night, of course. Worrying that he was right, that Bucky was unseemly and a fraud. Followed by remembering that Steve only said these things out of hurt for what they should have together. In a loop, he exchanged the two emotions; shame followed by aching love, over and over. Eventually—inevitably—he arrived at self-loathing.</p><p>James Barnes had been in love with Steven Rogers since he was seven years old. Perhaps, then, he hadn’t known it was love, but he had learned. He had accepted it and made it part of himself just as every other thing in his life was sewn into his every day existence. Steve, however, was not like Bucky. He was a revolution, or a war. He was an energy source barely kept under control.</p><p>The fields stretched out either side of him as he walked, shrouded in mist. The cry of a pheasant nearby cracked the morning air open like an egg. The bird clacked as it flew off and Bucky followed its progress, ignoring the stinging in his eyes that was only caused by the bright white light of the morning and the biting cold of February and had nothing to do with the hot, prickling sensation which had begun behind his eyes.</p><p>He heard the swish of boots and startled, turning about. A figure was approaching from the tree-lined foot of the valley, just emerging from the fog. Bucky recognised the tall, broad silhouette immediately, and the long stride. Steve was looking down, blonde head bowed as he walked.</p><p>Bucky stood still on his higher ground, frozen into the landscape like a deer scenting a blundering predator. He should call out. He should leave.</p><p>Steve looked up.</p><p>“Bucky.”</p><p>The quiet of the morning carried his name from Steve’s lips straight to Bucky’s sore heart.</p><p>They walked towards one another, Bucky through the thick marsh grasses of the hillside, Steve striding over the cropped turf of the misty field. He stopped at the dry stone wall, leaning over it as if he would break right through to come and grab Bucky for himself, but knowing that he shouldn’t, allowed the heavy shards of rock to keep him back.</p><p>Bucky found himself running down the last few feet of rough turf, his coat billow out behind him, fluttering over the tussocks and ferns. Then they stood, three feet apart and divided by their symbolic wall of stone.</p><p>“Forgive me,” Steve said quickly. Rushed to say, even, which was not like him at all. “I have been the most unmitigated fool with my flippant words.” He lifted his hand and ran it through his shocking mess of hair, locks falling every which way onto his furrowed brow. Bucky wanted to push his hands through that hair more than anything.</p><p>Instead, he opened his mouth to say something, but realised that he had no response. </p><p>Luckily, it seemed Steve was far from finished. “I don’t have the right words to describe to you how much you mean to me,” he looked down at the wall between them as he spoke, the bright blue of his eyes an agonising light against the washed-out morning. He pressed on, “I shouldn’t have said any of those things. I shouldn’t have been angry at you for dancing, I shouldn’t have preached to you about the things I want which we both know it is impossible for me to have… I shouldn’t have aimed my words at you with malice as I did. I was wrong about all of it.”</p><p>“Steve—” Bucky tried, but was instantly cut off by Steve’s hand coming to his cheek. When had he moved down the last of the hill?</p><p>“No, Buck, please. I love you. I love you so much, I can barely hold all of it inside this feeble body. I want to live my life beside you and not spend a day apart from you, because every time I have to be away from you my heart breaks.” Steve brought both his hands to clasp Bucky’s face between them, “Do you understand why I am so hurt by you, while I also love you so much? You are the most precious thing in the entire world. So when I have to face that I cannot have you beside me no matter what we do, no matter what story we write for ourselves, I just get so angry.”</p><p>Cradled between those two large hands, Bucky watched Steve rail against himself, storming and lashing. Eventually, he squeezed Steve’s wrists, the corded muscle resisting his fingers. “Alright, alright,” he gently brought their hands together and kissed Steve’s knuckles, “That’s enough.” The hands in his slowly lost their rigidity, and Bucky kissed them again.</p><p>Steve stared at him, the soft, thick smudges of his eyebrows knotted by his frustration. He opened his mouth to say more, no doubt more words fuelled by self flagellation, but Bucky stopped him.</p><p>“Steven,” he spoke into the two large and warm hands clasped in his, “I know. And what’s more, I know that there is nothing on this good green Earth that will prevent you from using your anger to try and do the right thing. You fell in love with me, and I’m not the right thing. I know.” Bucky leaned his forehead down onto the joined knuckles, breathing out.</p><p>“No,” Steve sounded more heartbroken than Bucky had ever heard him, “Bucky, you are the rightest thing.” He slowly untangled their hands to lift Bucky’s face to the morning once more, “Sometimes I can’t see it, because I’m a fool. I leave you to try and defend your corner when your corner should be my everything. The only place I want to be.” His deep voice dipped into a whisper as he brought their mouths together, kissing Bucky with such fierce concentration that he was almost lifted clean off his feet and hauled over the rough stone of their wall then and there.</p><p>The feeling of being so clasped, of being held up by Steve’s passion, almost destroyed the thin veneer of Bucky’s self control, but he managed to resist. Just. Instead, he placed his palms on the unyielding stone and pushed himself back.</p><p>Steve broke their kiss, letting go of him as if his hands burned, “Buck?” his words quickly falling from heartbreak into devastation. He looked at his own hands if they had betrayed him by holding Bucky against his will.</p><p>Bucky pushed back further, stepping away from the wall. He tried to smile in a way that would reassure Steve that he wasn’t hurt by the forceful kiss, but it was hard when all he really wanted to do was leap over the wall and resume it. They shouldn’t, because although they were breaking dawn together in a deserted field, it was too dangerous to go kissing one another out here. He wiped one hand over his lips and then, struck by inspiration, lifted his fingers and sucked two inside his mouth, delicately licking around them. Once Steve was panting over the wall, torn between horror at his own lapse in control and the desire to smash his control against every stone which stood between them, Bucky pulled the thoroughly wet fingers free.</p><p>“I’m going to go home. And I’m going to sleep for a good long time,” Bucky said. “So should you, because I’m going to come and dine with you tonight, nice and private.”</p><p>Steve finally stood up straight, hands coming to his hips and one shining black boot nuzzling into some nook in the stone. Bucky ignored what the sight of the most beautiful man he had ever encountered, squared up and ready to pounce, was doing to him.</p><p>“You know it’s how it has to be, Steve.”</p><p>Steve huffed a misty breath through the frosted air. God, Bucky could see the tone of his skin through his finely woven shirt, it was exquisite torture. He took another fortifying step back from the wall, almost tripping on his coat hem.</p><p>Steve cocked an eyebrow. “Not even one proper kiss? To show how sorry I am,” he deliberately made his voice low and rough, Bucky was sure.</p><p>“I offered you plenty of kisses to show you all sorts of things last night. You turned down all of them.”</p><p>Steve laughed then, albeit a little ruefully, “I see. I reap what I have sown. Alright. Tonight, at the house. We’ll eat and not a servant will be seen.”</p><p>Bucky couldn’t help the grin which broke out on his face, and he laughed when the morning’s sunlight pierced through the fog, cutting down into the valley and falling on his golden lover’s face.</p><p>Steve squinted and threw a hand over his eyes, calling Bucky’s name, but he had already turned away. He may be able to resist one passionate kiss, but Steve with his golden hair illuminated by the first rays of the day? Those luminous eyes lit by rays of pure, clear winter sun? Steve was the saint, not Bucky. Bucky would simply crumble.</p><p>The frost sparkled as he walked, bursting into severe fragments as the sun crept up the valley on his heels. The crunching of a thousand shards glittering ice accompanied each step he took, but the cold did not touch him. He followed his damp footsteps from earlier, wondering at how he had left the house tortured and was returning so fortified. Surely that was the true power Steve had; a love that made Bucky feel both the depths of despair and the highest, breathless heights of joy was a love worth hiding.</p><p>Maybe now Steve knew that too.</p>
<p></p><div class="center">
  <p>✧✦✧</p>
</div>Bucky arrived dressed for dancing, Steve noticed. His jacket was pinned to his ribcage so tightly that it was a wonder the silver and ivory buttons did not burst when Bucky bowed smartly upon entering the library behind Steve’s impeccable butler. His hair was a fluffy mess and he still wore his riding gloves—skin tight leather. His waistcoat was <i>red</i>, and <i>silk</i>. Steve felt his eyebrows climb and his breath warm just from sitting there taking it all in.<p>“Dinner will be served shortly, sir,” Ellis, the butler, intoned.</p><p>Unlike the library at the Barnes’ residence, the great gallery of Chatsworth’s library was not divided by rows or aisles of books, but merely walled by them. In the center of it all, an enormous fireplace warmed the room, surrounded by worn, leather chairs and spindly tables with convenient cubby holes for stashing stacks of more books—those waiting to be read or sorted. The sheer size of the room made it far less intimate than Bucky’s cosy book warren, but it was by far preferable to Steve to dine with his friends here than in the dining room where footmen would loom behind their chairs and the candelabra would stand between them. Better to dine at the smaller table here and soak in the firelight in peace.</p><p>Steve did not move from his position reclined with his booted feet extended to the hearth, a book forgotten in his hand. “Going somewhere later, Buck?” he asked.</p><p>Bucky smirked and threw himself into the armchair opposite, turning to peek over his shoulder to watch Ellis’s grandiose progress out the door before turning slowly back around to appraise Steve. “Maybe. Depends on how distracting my dinner company proves to be.”</p><p>The filthy tease.</p><p>Steve, meanwhile, hadn’t bothered to dress properly at all. In his home, he rarely did. He may be the son of a great house, and he kept the house great to the best of his ability, but he had very quickly adopted the permissible eccentricities of living alone after his mother had passed. He wore loose trousers and open necked shirts, usually. The maids had had to get used to his state of dishabille, but none of them really seemed to mind. Some had credited his air of dottiness with grief for the Rogers’ much missed matriarch, Lady Sarah, but the truth was that Steve had always abhorred enduring a tightly laced existence for no one’s benefit but his own. Bucky had never shared this sentiment, however, and Steve had always found that to be both beyond his comprehension, and utterly charming.</p><p>Now, he watched as Bucky’s dancing eyes flicked from his shining boots to the waistline of his grey trousers, following the thin, crushed silk of his shirt to where it peeled open at his chest, revealing his throat and clavicle. Bucky smiled, then bit his fat lower lip, finally raising his eyes to level with Steve’s. “How nice of you to dress for me,” he sounded hungry.</p><p>“Help yourself to a drink,” Steve gestured to the bottle of wine, uncorked and resting, on the table between them, ready with two crystal glasses. Bucky obliged, pouring into both and using the bottle to nudge Steve’s towards him before settling back into a sprawl. He appeared intimately satisfied to settle into the unconventionality of two men of close acquaintance sharing the inappropriate setting of dinner-in-the-library.</p><p>Bucky nudged at a chess board Steve had set up earlier while he had been trying to distract himself from the smouldering desire that itched at his core.</p><p>Steve broke the ice. “I’ve been thinking about what I want to do to you all day,” he murmured, just loud enough that the crackle of the fire almost covered it.</p><p>It was a good thing, too, because no sooner had Bucky opened his mouth to respond, than Ellis and three footmen were approaching laden with trays. Bucky snapped his mouth shut and threw Steve a reproachful look which was not nearly reproachful enough to hide his delight.</p><p>They each stood slowly and made their way to the prepared table, seating themselves casually and waiting for the dishes to be arranged and the candelabra to be properly lit before placing their glasses of wine among the platters and cutlery on the small table. The footmen soon retreated, herded by Ellis, who, being exemplary, knew that his master and his best friend were not to be waited upon as they ate.</p><p>“I do wonder sometimes if Ellis has ever caught us at it, you know,” Bucky muttered offhandedly as he opened his lovely mouth to place a morsel of pork chop between his teeth.</p><p>Steve laughed into his wine, “Probably,” he shrugged.</p><p>“You shrug,” Bucky spoke through his mouthful, “but isn’t this precisely what makes you wish I would disappear sometimes?”</p><p>Steve put his glass down and pinned Bucky with a look he hoped was as filled with emotion as his stupid head was. “Buck, I never ever want you to disappear. Ever. Please don’t say things like that.”</p><p>Bucky swallowed and toyed with his empty fork, “Let me rephrase. How can you shrug at the unexpressed opinion of your butler, but rail at me on the opinions of society.”</p><p>Steve took a quick mouthful of potato to buy himself time answering. Bucky wasn’t mincing words tonight. Steve had to suppose he deserved it. “I suppose it’s to do with my life as I’ve lived it so far,” he said eventually, “I’m left to myself in this beautiful house, I have endless resources and a position of power. My staff are conscientious and share my liberal views. I ensure all of them are educated and happy. My friends and peers respect me. So perhaps it’s natural that when I come upon something so devastating and glorious as…”</p><p>Bucky slowly lowered his glass, “As?”</p><p>“As my love for you. I find it hard to accept that it will always be clandestine and secret.” Once the words were out, Steve quickly returned to his food and ignored the way shame pricked at his neck.</p><p>Bucky hummed. Then Steve felt fingers on the back of his hand. “Forgive me,” Bucky said softly. “I don’t mean to punish you. I just need to know where we stand.”</p><p>“Good,” Steve swallowed whatever thick emotion was obstructing his throat, “Good. Because I’m not planning on letting you stand anywhere tomorrow.”</p><p>The gruff delivery of such a line was well worth it for the bark of laughter Bucky let forth, clearing the air. Their eyes met over the table and Steve raised his glass in toast. Bucky answered with his own and they drank, never breaking eye contact, sending frissions of heat across their plates.</p><p>They were almost done with their meal, the bottle of wine exhausted, when Bucky spoke again, his voice taking on a familiar richness. “Tell me more about what you’ll be doing to me to turn my legs into lead weights, then.”</p><p>Steve pushed back his chair, pulling discreetly on the bell before gesturing to Bucky to come back over to the fireplace. They stood together, closer than they had been all night, with no table or meal between them. He felt Bucky turn to look at him and longed to meet his gaze, knowing he would find that same irresistible light in them which had made him almost lose his mind that morning—it had broken some barrier inside him and he had just desperately wanted to consume the space between them. End it. Their kiss had been a blinding heat for him, beyond reason or pleasure. Instead of turning to meet that unstoppable force, he felt for Bucky’s hand and clasped it in his own. “Remove your jacket. Sit down. When Ellis comes, ask him for port. I’ll be back in a moment.”</p><p>And then he left, hearing a soft sigh behind him and knowing that Bucky had his head tipped back and his hands clenched into fists.</p><p>He passed Ellis in the corridor, nodding, and sprinted up the great staircase. There was a small item he wanted and he had been remiss in not preparing it earlier, but he hadn’t exactly planned their entire evening out as he agonised his way through the day. Unlike Bucky, he didn’t have the capacity to plan exciting and titillating assignations, it turned out. It made him appreciate all the many ways Bucky had played architect to their relationship in the past—all the opportunities he had created.</p><p>His rooms were warm and welcoming when he got there, and as he rooted in his writing desk for the items he wanted, he did glance through the open double doors to the large and velvet draped bed which waited there, invitingly lit and offering luxurious warmth and softness. But it was not to be tonight. It wouldn’t be hard to have Bucky, his supposed best friend and constant companion, come to his rooms under any old pretext, but tonight it wouldn’t appear natural, however much it might <i>feel</i> natural to pick that lithe and vibrant body up and bring him here to ravish him.</p><p>Steve tucked his newly acquired tools into his pocket and retraced his steps.</p><p>Bucky had done as instructed, and when Steve rounded the final clutch of armchairs and stepped back into the glow of the hearth, it was to the sight of him, ruby red waistcoat unbuttoned, cravats loosened, and a glass of port held loosely against the inside of one thigh. He was biting his lip again. </p><p>Picking up the decanter from the table, Steve breathed the aroma of the perfectly aerated contents before pouring himself a generous glass. The smell of the cask aged liquid filtered through the smoky scent of the fire. He stood over Bucky as he took his first sip, enjoying the imbalance; his overpowering height and size to the half empty glass and Bucky’s loosened posture. His cheeks were flushed and he was watching Steve’s lips as he drank with intense interest.</p><p>The port was young, ruby red in the glass and tasting intensely of berries and vanilla. It coated Steve’s tongue and left him with a second swallow of sweetness. This wasn’t his preferred serve of 30-year aged tawny. “You chose the port specifically?”</p><p>“Ellis suggested it,” Bucky brought his own glass to his lips, inhaling the scent before tipping his head back to drain the last viscous drops. “I rather like it. Very… ripe. One might almost think he wanted us to have a wild evening.”</p><p>Steve sipped, smiling into the glass and enjoying the fumes of heady sweetness which perfectly complemented the man spread out before him, loosened and ready to be consumed. Slowly, he placed his glass down on the closest surface and continued his journey down, bending over Bucky until he was caged in.</p><p>“<i>Saint of some man</i>,” he began, “<i>at the peak of all stands.</i>”</p><p>Bucky went still.</p><p>“My back is turned to any sense, and my heart is truly open,” Steve murmured.</p><p>Swallowing hard, Bucky reached up, “That door better be locked tight,” he whispered before pulling Steve down and onto his lips, a harsh kiss tasting of sweet wine and salty skin.</p><p>It was heated, and delicious, but Steve was determined. He knelt on the leather upholstery to press his probing fingers through Bucky’s unruly curls, “<i>O, what heinous things I’d do for that man</i>,” he recited, “and I would, Buck, I would. <i>Beyond him all sense and pride are broken.</i>”</p><p>Bucky moaned against his mouth, sliding his devious hands from Steve’s chest to his neck, teasing all the way. Two thumbs caressed his collar bones, pressing into the hollow of his throat before tracing up to his adams apple, where Bucky flattened his palm and tucked his fingers into the hot, flushed thrum of Steve’s neck, feeling greedily at the pulse which fluttered there. Steve pressed his weight down, shifting to drop his other knee onto the couch, clenching both hands in the irresistible softness of curls which he could just tug on so gently and be given the prize of gasps and whimpers.</p><p>It was only once they had thoroughly bitten at each other’s lips and breathlessly sucked and licked their way into a full embrace that Bucky found the breath to respond. “Steven,” he spoke against the flushed warmth of Steve’s cheek, “<i>put upon me your…</i> damn, I forgot, <i>any weight, any insult</i>,” he finished with a heavy breath.</p><p>Steve dragged his head back by the hair, kneeling up to better look down on his mess, “Forgot his own love poetry?” he reached down to squeeze the very prominent and stiff erection straining the front of Bucky’s skimpy breeches. “Your mind wandering, sweetheart?”</p><p>The wet gasps and mewls his probing fingers produced were just as good as any poem, to Steve’s ears, so he continued to rub and fondle, folding himself down to set his teeth to the soft column of Bucky’s neck.</p><p>Hands tugged insistently at Steve’s shirt until it came loose from the waistband of his trousers, then Bucky was sliding his hands everywhere, nails scraping over his spine. Steve groaned at the sensation of being held, possessed. Bucky left no inch unexplored before he moved southwards, tucking first one finger, then several under the strained waistband in the way of where he desperately wanted to be.</p><p>“Not yet,” Steve succumbed to petting Bucky’s unruly curls, delighted by the whining reaction to his denial. “It’s not fair, you’re still all covered up,” he pointed out.</p><p>Bucky wriggled and attempted to push Steve off him, clearly determined to get out of his clothes as quickly as he was able. Steve was happy to oblige, rolling to lie back on the cushions.</p><p>Bucky shrugged out of his waistcoat, discarding the luscious red silk in a heap on the rug. His breeches went next, inched down his thighs in one long, slow movement. Socks and boots went too, joining the crumpled mess on the floor. Bucky’s legs were a marvel, long and elegant, with just the perfect amount of delicious padding around the thigh to make them a handful. He arranged them artfully in the firelight, spread, but not too far. The tails of his shirt were hiding anything scandalous while the white silk loops of his cravat were still cocooning his throat, creating an arresting contrast to his bare thighs.</p><p>Steve reached forward to grab at the dangling end of the fabric, looping it through his fingers. He used it to pull Bucky towards him, leading him on until he came to rest with his thighs either side of Steve’s.</p><p>“Oh, my love,” Steve brought both hands to Bucky’s throat, pressing one around the vulnerable flesh while the other worked to loosen the knots of silk. Bucky extended his neck helpfully, tipping his chin up even as he watched Steve from beneath his lashes. At length, Steve pulled the fabric free, gathering the loops in his hands. The neck of Bucky’s shirt fell open, revealing the hidden secrets beneath—the pair of familiar bite marks Steve had left what felt like an eternity ago, but in reality was just a few days.</p><p>Steve ran his thumb over the worst of it, feeling the way the flesh was hardened by the clotted blood near the surface. He worried at the bruise with his fingertips, enjoying the way it made Bucky squirm. “Some great brute bit you, you poor thing,” he smiled.</p><p>“Some great brute indeed,” Bucky made himself comfortable in Steve’s lap, snuggling in tight until he was firmly wedged against the hard length of Steve’s cock, rocking into it with the meat of his thigh.</p><p>Steve sank into the seat and let the sensation roll through him, enjoying the way Bucky rolled his hips and hitched his breath. He pinched the hem of Bucky’s loose shirt in both hands and began to pull it upwards. Both arms raised obediently and in a moment Bucky was naked in his lap, acres of lovely creamy skin lit by the orange firelight.</p><p>“So beautiful,” Steve let his eyes linger on the hard perfection of Bucky’s chest, enjoying the rapid pace at which it was rising and falling. He drew both hands up Bucky’s fire-warmed skin, “I have some idea about what to do with all this.”</p><p>Before Bucky could respond, Steve tightened his grip and hefted them both off the couch. He let Bucky unravel his ridiculous long legs, but revelled in the way he clung, self-conscious of his nakedness in the great room. Coddling him, Steve guided them to the huge desk which sat, squat and unused behind a clutch of reading chairs. A lamp stood nearby and Steve turned up the wick, casting a healthy pale glow over the richly grained wood. He brought the lamp to the desk and set it at one end and Bucky in the middle.</p><p>Spreading his thighs very invitingly, and making a delicious tableau on the polished surface, Bucky wasted no time in putting one hand on himself and reaching for Steve with the other.</p><p>Steve, however, paused only long enough to kiss him before pulling Bucky’s discarded cravat from where he had stashed it in his pocket. “You look beautiful with your hands on yourself, my love, but that’s my job,” he rumbled.</p><p>Bucky looked torn between hurt and excitement as he slowly pulled his hand from his cock. It was flushed and hard lying against his stomach, the red blush of the tip a lovely contrast.</p><p>“Put your arms behind you,” Steve instructed. Bucky complied, sitting up straighter and holding onto his own elbows, arms folded neatly into the small of his back.</p><p>He didn’t say anything as Steve nudged between his thighs and reached around him to wind the white silk around his arms, but gently leaned his forehead against Steve’s still-clothed chest. </p><p>“I’m going to bend you over this desk and write myself a love letter on all this beautiful skin,” he interrupted himself with a kiss to Bucky’s panting mouth, “incomparable boy.”</p><p>They were of an age—Bucky was no younger, no more a boy than Steve was, but it seemed important to acknowledge that they were boys in love. Men now, but certainly boys when they started. Bucky shivered in anticipation, leaning up to ask for another kiss, looping his legs around Steve’s waist to draw them tight together. Steve indulged him with enthusiasm.</p><p>“Up you get,” Steve egged himself on once the white ties were thick, tight bars around Bucky’s wrists and forearms.</p><p>He slid off the desk easily, not yet wet or messy enough to be sticky. Steve would change that soon enough. He held his naked armful up by the wrists, enjoying the way Bucky had begun panting in anticipation, before flipping him around and gently pressing him face-down onto the desktop.</p><p>Steve wished, somewhere in his fuzzy mind, for the sort of beautiful language that Bucky was able to employ when he wrote. He ran his hand over the soft, rounded flesh presented before him, every plane a delight, every little dip and protrusion fascinating to him. He pressed his palm deep into the dip at the base of Bucky’s spine, feeling the way his body gave way to press tight to the polished wood of the desk.</p><p>He put his hand into his pocket and drew out the small accoutrements he had fetched; a vial of amber liquid, a squat little bar of blue wax, the wick neatly trimmed, and a hefty signet ring. Steve didn’t wear it usually, but his father and grandfather had worn it daily for the long stretches of their lives in the House of Lords. It was a strong gold, neatly moulded, and featuring the Rogers family crest of celestial figures surrounded by laurel.</p><p>Steve laid the cold, smooth weight of it at the very last notch of Bucky’s spine, just above the little crest where firm muscles and nicks of bone gave way to the softer, warmer flesh of his round behind. A shiver followed. Bucky’s fingers clenched into fists, flexing against the ties, and he sighed against the desk, his voice bouncing around the room in a more satisfying sound than any party fizz or conversational flutter.</p><p>“Know what it is?” he drew the cold metal up the long path of vertebrae arrayed before him, enjoying the little shivers and shifts Bucky made. “All this lovely bare skin,” he pressed the plate of the ring into the silky little shadow formed by one shoulderblade, “just waiting for me to put marks on it.”</p><p>Bucky’s breath hitched, “W-What is it?”</p><p>“Something with my name on it,” Steve bent to whisper into his ear, enjoying the warm lengths of bare flesh against him. His cock was hard and straining inside the confines of his clothing, but there was something deeply satisfying about the thin barrier separating him from Bucky’s bare skin. He wasn’t ready yet, to touch him skin to skin. It was hopeless to resist the alluring softness though, and he pressed in close to run his tongue up the damp, shadowed length of Bucky’s neck, pausing to wrap his lips and teeth around an earlobe.</p><p>He lifted the ring, admiring the little red lines it had imprinted on soft skin, and held it just in Bucky’s view.</p><p>Bucky squirmed, pushing back into him, shameless. Face and chest pressed to the desktop, it was all he could do to show Steve what he wanted, but he was showing. The way his spine was curved just so and his hips were shifting in a way that said ‘helpless wriggling’ but <i>felt</i> like heaven told Steve all he needed to know about Bucky’s state of arousal. Just to top Steve off with a head full of steam, however, he opened his lovely mouth right against the wooden table top and said, “Mmm–mark me? Write your name all over me, Stevie. Do it.”</p><p>The sound the lamp made as Steve dragged it across the surface of the desk was loud and Bucky’s rapidly cooling flesh jumped under his other hand. He made a lovely, questioning noise. Steve let the glass cover clink as he lifted it off. The naked wick flickered in the air of the room, the harsher, unhooded flame sending waves of fresh light over Bucky’s back and putting orange lights in his dark hair. Steve held the wax in the flame until it ignited, rolling the stick slowly in his fingers. Once it was well warmed and the wax was soft, he carefully pulled back.</p><p>“All this beautiful skin,” he murmured, running his free hand down Bucky’s back to his irresistibly chubby bottom, digging his fingers in. “All mine. I think I’ll make it official.”</p><p>The first drip of wax fell from a significant height, hitting the soft flesh just above Bucky’s hip. He jumped and shuddered, a little <i>huh</i> sound falling from his mouth.</p><p>Steve let the wax dribble again, accumulating in the same spot until he had a little pool. Some ran on a little further, crawling down Bucky’s side towards the wood, where it would permanently ruin the 14th century carpentry. It never got that far, however, crawling to a stop where it cooled on Bucky’s shivering skin. Smirking, Steve grabbed the signet ring and slipped the weight of it onto his finger. Then he pressed it down hard into the wax, pushing Bucky’s body tighter to the hard surface that he was fast becoming intimately acquainted with.</p><p>“Oh—<i>Christ</i>,” Bucky gasped.</p><p>Steve picked his hand up and admired his handiwork. It was a mess. Barely recognisable as a seal, but the tiny Rogers crest was perfectly legible where it formed a little plaque of hard wax on Bucky’s hip. He brushed his fingers over it, finding that the wax had adhered completely to the skin, and that all the heat had quickly dissipated.</p><p>“Very nice,” he leaned down to lay his lips to it briefly. “This belongs to me now,” he squeezed his fingers around the prominent bone of Bucky’s hip and dug his nails in.</p><p>Bucky’s hands were in a white grip on his elbows. “Yes, what else—what else belongs to you?” he pressed, always ready to take Steve’s hand and lead him deeper. It made the banked heat of Steve’s lust come alight the way Bucky squirmed under him, willing and pliant, begging to take him wherever he wanted to go.</p><p>Steve’s palm felt hot against Bucky’s skin as he petted down the smooth length of one thigh, “Oh I have a few ideas about what belongs to me,” he said darkly, skimming his fingers higher, pressing two fingertips to the pink, exposed flesh of Bucky’s balls, vulnerable and soft.</p><p>Bucky halted his squirming abruptly. Steve could see his moist breaths puffing against the polished wood.</p><p>“These belong to me,” he whispered, rolling his fingers underneath, snuggling the pair in his palm and enjoying how it made Bucky abort all his mewling, suddenly so focussed on precisely what Steve planned to do next.</p><p>He picked up the bar of wax and held in the lamp’s flame again, repeating his precise and familiar ritual from earlier. The wax softened faster this time, and within just a few moments, he was trailing a long, thin line of blue across the back of Bucky’s thigh and the pink-ish underside of his arse. Bucky only shivered a little, but the hard weight of his cock against Steve’s knuckles made it very clear that Bucky was enjoying the heated ministrations.</p><p>“Steve—” he hiccuped, “Steve do it. <i>There</i>.”</p><p>Steve laughed, continuing his little trails of drippy sealing wax, holding the flame close to the skin, until a little of the hot liquid accumulated before breaking and running in a tiny cascade down the back of Bucky’s thigh. “Who am I to deny you, my love.”</p><p>Cupping his palm of his hand and tugging at the balls carefully ensconced therein, Steve brought the wax candle closer, holding the shining head and flame close to the little dip of soft puckered skin between them. When the first hot globule of wax hit his flesh, Bucky released a muffled moan, as if he was biting his lip. Steve didn’t spare a glance to check, too transfixed by the way thighs were shaking and Bucky’s cock was dripping milky little dribbles onto the carving of the desk.</p><p>“It’s—mmph—hot,” Bucky whimpered.</p><p>The liquid wax pooled and shone, and Steve slowly rotated his wrists, letting it spread and run across the delicate soft skin. He drew the dripping stick a little higher, letting a smear of blue fall into the soft, curly hairs that sparsely dusted the little stretch of skin between balls and hole. He let his curled fingers nudge at the tightly furled muscle there, enjoying the way Bucky went taut in anticipation of the hot wax on his most sensitive flesh. Steve didn’t let it fall though, quickly rolling the last drops and blowing out the flame. He set it aside on the lamp’s base and returned to the little pool of liquid on Bucky’s balls.</p><p>When he pressed the seal into the soft wax it sank in with satisfying depth. The increasing weight on Bucky’s balls was too much for their owner, and one of Bucky’s legs kicked up from the floor, his socked foot knocking into Steve’s thigh.</p><p>“Sorry,” he mumbled, mostly sounding anything but. “Oh, Steve!”</p><p>By the time Steve loosened the ring from the wax, Bucky’s cock was jerking in little jutting, wet motions, hanging heavy between his spread thighs. His freshly handled balls sat tight against the base, marked with a few stray drips and a clearly defined circular seal bearing the Rogers crest, good enough to seal up any letter.</p><p>Steve crouched down to admire his work, “Private correspondence, addressed to Mister Barnes,” he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the wax, enjoying the way his hot breath made Bucky call out his name again in that desperate little plea.</p><p>“Steve, please.” The wriggles were turning pointed and although the flame of the wax candle was well extinguished, the heat of their bodies was still rising. Steve found himself plastered to the back of Bucky’s stained thighs almost before he was fully straightened, grabbing at the little glass vial he had left abandoned. Bucky heard the clink of the lid opening and swayed his hips from side to side, rubbing the cheeks of his backside against the hard relief of Steve’s erection with increasing intent. “Yes, yes, inside me,” he turned his face down, pressing his forehead into the table and arching his back.</p><p>Steve complied, dripping a very different texture of liquid onto the intimate, pinker areas of Bucky’s flesh, all on display. The oil from the vial was a purified variety Steve had bought in Athens. He might have travelled there on a trip to supposedly study the art of the Iliad. Perhaps he had spent a little more time as a school boy obsessed over the greek statuary than his peers, and perhaps when he read about the Greek men of ancient times lying with their male lovers it had put in his mind the truth that he could now revel in, smoothing his silk fingers down the velvety length of Bucky’s crack; that he wanted this body. This long, muscled, lean length of man and boy all mixed up.</p><p>Knocking one booted foot against the inside of Bucky’s ankle, Steve ignored the oil staining his shirt as he reached down to wrap his hand fully around the length of Bucky’s cock and squeeze. In response, Bucky sighed and went limp against the table, moaning very encouragingly. With his other hand, Steve began to rub and press gently at the tight bud of Bucky’s hole, familiar with the way Bucky rubbed himself subtly against the table, recognising when to flatten his warm fingers over the slicked dip between plump cheeks to warm the skin.</p><p>“Inside, put them inside,” Bucky was rocking back more insistently soon enough. “Stev–ie,” he pleaded with the unyielding surface of the desk.</p><p>Steve was exceedingly unyielding himself, but it would take a better saint than he to resist the way Bucky’s thighs were beginning to tremble and his flushed little bottom warmed under Steve’s palm. He started with just one slippery finger, squeezing his other hand tight around the head of Bucky’s cock, pulling the length back between his spread thighs to enjoy the way it made his back bow.</p><p>The sound of slick fingers and Bucky’s moans filled the air, and Steve crowded in close, pushing the and pulling on Bucky’s body to assuage his own raging desire. His finger were rough, struggling clumsily against the need to rip his own clothes off where he stood. Bucky just kept asking for more though, yeses and pleases following one after another in rapid, ineloquent succession.</p><p>“Such a change from your good manners,” Steve sank two well-oiled digits deep, “until I get you bent over my desk and describe this body to you with my hands.”</p><p>Bucky squirmed, biting off his begging.</p><p>“No, don’t stop,” Steve said, dipping his voice low and leaning down to get his teeth around a mouthful of Bucky’s skin, “keep saying my name like that, my love.”</p><p>Perhaps it was his warm breath on Bucky’s skin or the slightly shifted angle of his fingers, but when Steve stroked the tips of his fingers back this time, it caused a ripple through Bucky’s over-stretched body. He gasped and writhed and the white silk binding his arms came tight, digging into the soft, exposed flesh of his forearms.</p><p>“Oh, that’s nice, isn’t it,” Steve hummed and repeated his little strokes, one on another on another, tightening a loop of his thumb and forefinger around the base of Bucky’s cock as he felt it fill against his palm.</p><p>Three fingers added an extra layer of fullness and Bucky gurgled happily into the table, sweat beginning to form in little droplets along his neck and in the deep, curving dip of his back.</p><p>Steve removed his hand from Bucky’s dripping cock, letting the warm, heavy weight of it drop back between his legs. A little whine mixed with Steve’s name at that, but it was quickly stifled when he took a firm grip on one chubby cheek and spread it wide to slide a fourth finger inside.</p><p>“So good,” Steve muttered absently as he watched the tight wreath of muscle give way to his slick touch. Bucky shuddered and pressed himself deeper into the wood, his bare toes just barely brushing the floor as he gave up trying to hold his own weight.</p><p>It only took a few moments of Steve gently twisting and thrusting his four fingers before Bucky was pushing back against him, however, mewling encouragingly. “C’mon,” was audible through the panting, “C’mon and put it in me.”</p><p>Crass, filthy, debauched. It was nevertheless with a vibrant sensuality that Bucky asked for what he wanted. And Steve found that against his better judgement, he loved to hear about how much Bucky wanted it, how hard he wanted it. How many times a day he wanted Steve, from which angle he wanted Steve, all of it resulted in him wanting Steve. And that was what mattered.</p><p>The soft sound of his trouser button was enough for Bucky to lift his head and hum in anticipatory approval, trying his best to peek back under his shoulder to see. Steve let him, pushing away his flies and lifting the airy, white fabric of his shirt to tuck it behind the length of his hard cock. Bucky said “Ahhhmnng—yes.”</p><p>Palming his length, Steve used his well oiled hand to get it a little messy, almost overcome by the wave of pleasure that thrummed through him as he finally got a good hold on himself.</p><p>“Does it feel good, Stevie?” Bucky whispered from his hunched, strained position.</p><p>Steve watched Bucky’s dark, stormy gaze on him, taking a firmer grip on himself and preening a little under the intensity.</p><p>“It does, huh? I feel better, though,” and he smirked, red lips wet and covered in the filth which came through them.</p><p>“Yeah, you do,” Steve agreed.</p><p>Once the blunt head of his cock was pressed to the dripping, slippery entrance, Steve knew that as soon as he pushed deeper he would lose his tenuous grip on control of both Bucky and himself. That both thrilled him and frustrated him in equal measures. He ran the fingers of one hand over the tight seam of where his cock met pink, stretched skin, dipping lower until he could cup Bucky’s poor waxed balls again. He flicked his thumb over the tab of the seal, enjoying the way Bucky sucked in a surprised breath. The seal remained fastened tight, despite drips of oil and drops of sweat which had done away with some of the less substantial waxy trails.</p><p>He pushed deeper, letting Bucky’s body adjust, desperate to thrust in deep and get his grip all over the neat, trim circumference of Bucky’s waist to pull and pull. He resisted, feeling his thighs clench with the effort. He thumbed at the wax seal, letting the edge of his nail play along the uneven edge. He couldn’t see it, tucked out of sight beneath his own slowly sinking cock, but he could feel the brittle texture of the wax and imagined that the inch-wide tab felt much much bigger to Bucky as he lay there, shivering and sweating, cock hard and slick, resting against the smooth, hard edge of the desk.</p><p>It was useless—meaningless—to attempt to resist the gravelly moan of need that left him when he was fully seated in the tight, slick heat. Bucky’s shoulders heaved, his fingers clenching and unclenching sporadically, hair a mess of damp curls that tumbled lazily as Steve pulled back, just a little, then thrust in.</p><p>After that it was the free-falling, all-encompassing delight of taking what he wanted. Steve gripped at Bucky’s folded arms with one hand, and <i>rode</i> him, while Bucky egged him on with increasingly obscene remarks from his precarious position face-down and writhing.</p><p>“Oh,” he gasped, “that’s it, that’s <i>it</i>, the full Rogers. Every inch of it—satisfy me Steven.”</p><p>Bucky knew when to let loose with his mouth and it was when Steve was already too far over the edge, the rhythmic slap-slap of their bodies at an unstoppable pace. He gritted his teeth and pulled the bound arms in his grasp towards himself, hauling Bucky’s weight off the surface of the desk.</p><p>“You are very, very badly behaved,” he whispered into the sweaty mess of curls that he thrust his nose into, breathing deep to soak himself in the scent of Bucky’s arousal. “How are you the same good—sweet—loving man,” each thrust was an effort almost beyond Steve’s endurance, “who wrote my name into verse?” He let go and Bucky fell back into the hardwood with a soft, broken sound.</p><p>Sliding his fingers through the mixed sweat and oil on Bucky’s lower back, Steve leaned down, pressing his clothed chest to the tightly wrapped rigidity of Bucky’s arms and bending his head to kiss the back of his neck.</p><p>“It’s alright,” he kissed and licked at the salty dribbles of sweat, “I know you can’t help it.”</p><p>Bucky pressed back into his thrusting hips, nodding his head as best he could with Steve’s weight smothering him and his arms bound.</p><p>Steve felt his own perspiration sticking his shirt to his back, tugging the fabric over his skin in such a way as to feel deliberate. He was sensitive all over, hyper-aware of the way the cool air of the room hit their damp, writhing bodies and turned their sweat to steam. The heat of the lamp seemed both searing and completely inadequate. He slapped both hands to Bucky’s sides and pulled himself upright again, pushing deep, as deep as he could go, becoming desperate and wild with need.</p><p>The last few thrusts were a wild ride from Steve thrusting into Bucky, to Steve thrusting both Bucky and the desk several inches over the floor; the great, oaken weight of it creaking and protesting against the great shove. Bucky cried out, throat hoarse and trying his best to bite it back, knowing that while moaning and teasing were all well and good behind a thick, locked door, a protesting shout would be too much for Steve’s well-trained servants to ignore.</p><p>The thrilling peak of climax was a ringing bell in Steve’s busy mind, clearing everything from his hot head. He draped himself over Bucky’s back, ignoring the way feeble wrists wriggled in their restraints.</p><p>Bucky hadn’t come yet. Steve needed a moment to plan. He rolled his head and pressed his lips to whatever skin he was resting on.</p><p>“Steve,” Bucky’s voice was full of unfulfilled need.</p><p>Slowly, he got back up, lifting his hands and his body off Bucky’s, slowly easing his spent cock free to tuck it hurriedly back into his trousers, and beginning to tug and pluck at the knot holding his arms tied.</p><p>Bucky didn’t say anything more as he lay there, cock straining against the unforgiving edge of the table, his abused balls welcoming a trickle of Steve’s come on top of the wax and oil. He was a mess, trembling and breathless.</p><p>Once the silk was coming free, Steve began to unwind and massage the red welts left behind in their wake. Naturally, after lying for so long with his face and chest pressed to the table, Bucky wanted to clutch his arms to his front, but Steve held his wrists fast.</p><p>“No, I don’t think so,” he said softly.</p><p>“Don’t th-think…?”</p><p>Taking pity on him, recognising the truly addled need of over-extended pleasure, Steve gathered Bucky into his arms. It was hard to collect all of his long, awkward limbs, so graceful usually, but turned stiff and awkward by his enthusiastic railing over the desk. The place he had lain was marked by salty smears of sweat and little pearly drips of his own pre-come. Steve bent to pick up the vial of oil and one more accessory from the drawer, a stiff wooden ruler, then turned to bring Bucky back into the warm circle of firelight.</p><p>The chaise was newly stuffed and had a pleasing bounce to it when he threw them both down against the cushions. Bucky choked and sobbed a little as his aching cock was jostled, reduced to clutching at Steve’s shoulder.</p><p>“Aw, poor boy,” Steve spoke into his ear.</p><p>There was certainly come and sweat getting rubbed into the soft velvet of the upholstery, but Steve didn’t give a fig. Bucky clung at him until Steve pushed firmly on his shoulder and reached down with his other hand to take a firm, warm grip on his hard cock. </p><p>“Come on, lie over me, Buck,” he paused to kiss swollen, bitten lips just once before pressing Bucky back down so that the full, naked length of him was positioned over Steve’s lap. He immediately wriggled until his hard, damp cock was pressed to Steve’s thigh and began to rock himself gently, hiding his flushed face under his arm in a way that Steve wouldn’t admit he found devastatingly endearing.</p><p>Steve had been fooling around with Bucky’s body for a long time. He had been familiar with the long lines of it since they had been small; his honey-coloured skin and big grey eyes had grown up as familiar to Steve as his own body. Perhaps that was why, when Bucky had so innocently asked him one day if Steve would hold him ‘as if I were a kitten or something—d’you think I’d be a good pet?’ Steve had ended that same day with another boy’s come on his fingers and a whole new set of things to think about. It had barely taken a month for him to figure out that Bucky didn’t just get excited about the warm fingers of someone other than himself on his prick. Bucky liked a lot more than that, and it turned out Steve did too.</p><p>He let Bucky rub himself in little bursts on his thigh, enjoying the helpless little shifts and the staggering breaths which were such a far cry from the poised and elegant figure Bucky presented all of the rest of the time. Only Steve was allowed to see this version of him, the Bucky whose eyes were heavily lidded, and who sought out carnal release against Steve’s body with single minded purpose. Manners meant nothing to them now.</p><p> He picked up the wooden ruler and laid it’s sandy surface against the flushed and oily underside of the plump posterior which occupied his lap. Bucky shivered and slowed his little thrusts. “Oh,” he said into the upholstery.</p><p>“Oh,” Steve echoed, tapping the wooden length of the thing a few times on the fattest part of his lapful. “I thought you’d like to finish off with this. Or I can do something else,” he let his fingers trail down and slide into the hot crack of Bucky’s arse, rubbing the tips of his fingers at the loosened, wet mess of his hole.</p><p>“Both,” Bucky whispered.</p><p>Steve tapped the ruler again a little harder, “Should have known. Spread your legs then.”</p><p>Bucky wriggled to do so, parting his legs and bracing his knees on the velvet. He was soft and pliant over Steve’s thighs, all the tense energy of earlier gone now that he could be still and cradled by cushions instead of plastered face first into wood. It was exactly the sort of condition Steve liked him to be in for this.</p><p>The flat wood of the ruler made a satisfying crack on oiled flesh when he brought it down. Bucky moaned and went even more bonelessly soft against him. Steve teased the fingers of his left hand at the wet, slippery skin of his hole, careful to keep his hand clear of the pink area already sporting a single red stripe. He slid his hand down, pushing his knuckles into the back of Bucky’s balls and dipping the thumb past his rim. He tugged gently as he brought the ruler swishing back down a second time, smacking right over the first blow.</p><p>Bucky mewled, rolling his hips against Steve’s thigh. He quickly bit his lip on the sound, too eager for more to let Steve know he was already affected.</p><p>The third strike hit slightly higher, right over where Steve had earlier pressed the wax seal, which had come loose at some point and fallen, leaving only a faint blue stain and some crumbs of wax clinging to the meatier flesh at the back of Bucky’s hip. Steve laid the ruler down a moment and used his fingers to brush the last remaining bits of wax off, feeling it tug at the tiny hairs, causing Bucky to wriggle at an unexpected point of pain among the very much anticipated ones.</p><p>Steve pushed his thumb deeper into the lush mess between rapidly pinkening cheeks, feeling Bucky shift a little, subtly trying to get the pressure where he wanted it, stroking at the little point inside him that would end their little session rather quickly, more quickly than Steve was willing to. He was basking in the aftermath of his orgasm, relaxed and enjoying putting tomorrow’s bruises on top of today’s mess.</p><p>“No,” he admonished when Bucky pushed up on his hand picking up the ruler again to hold it flat against the damp hollow of Bucky’s spine. “I’ll give you what you want in good time.”</p><p>Bucky threw him a reproachful look over one shoulder, “Hit me harder, please,” his voice was hoarse and warm, perfectly pitched to work dark and lustful magic on Steve’s better sense. He was swinging the ruler down before he even thought to reply.</p><p>The wet crack of the wood pulled a moan from Bucky. Steve inspected the ruler, seeing how much of the wood had turned dark with oil and sweat from Bucky’s skin. “Don’t think I’ll be able to use this ruler again after this, you’ve made it all dirty.”</p><p>“Let’s just throw away the whole desk,” Bucky mumbled into his arm.</p><p>“It’s Louis XIV, I think not,” Steve whipped the length of the ruler back down again, twinning the movement with plucking his thumb past the slick rim of Bucky’s hole. He immediately replaced it with two of his fingers, pumping them in slowly, feeling the rippling effect his ministrations were having on Bucky’s muscles. Finally, it was enough to push Bucky’s boneless approach to his arousal over the edge, and he moaned long and low, writhing against Steve’s thighs.</p><p>“Oh,” he pressed his forehead down into his arm, “<i>Mm</i>—”</p><p>Steve pressed deeper, stroking and pressing at the inside walls of him, thoroughly enjoying the way his lapfull came undone more and more as he teased. He could feel the dampness of Bucky’s precome soaking through the leg of his trouser.</p><p>“Oh, Mister Rogers,” Bucky breathed through his raptures, “don’t tease, so.”</p><p>It sent an unwilling trickle of warmth down Steve’s spine to hear his name referred to in full like that, as if Bucky were always to address him so. As if they were companions in society. They never would be, but for their own private society here in Steve’s lofty library, but perhaps that was enough. He thrust his fingers in and out gently, rubbing the rough pad of his thumb on the smooth, shiny skin of one cheek. “I don’t have to tease you, my dear, I just have to sit here and barely do a thing and you’re all aflutter.”</p><p>The unyielding length of the ruler smacked down again, perilously close to the stretched, wet place where Steve’s fingers were moving in neat, economical strokes which caused the thighs draped over his to tremble.</p><p>“Are you close, darling?” he asked, low.</p><p>Bucky hiccupped and bit off a gasp, “S-So—yes, close. Very.”</p><p>Unable to resist the urge to feel for himself, Steve dropped the ruler and sank his fingers deep into the glowing, reddened flesh of Bucky’s plump behind. The skin was hot and delightfully pliant against his palm. He drummed his fingertips over the flesh, alternatively digging them in and brushing them lightly over the multitude of red stripes which decorated the once smooth expanse. He began to work the fingers of his busy left hand a little faster, teasing insistently.</p><p>Bucky pushed himself up on his hands, abruptly changing his figure from a serpentine length to a much more animated position. He worked himself shamelessly against the once-pristine length of Steve’s thigh, panting and desperate.</p><p>“Look at you, dearest,” Steve heard his own voice break over it, “helpless, what a mess. Come along, get your mess all over me. I don’t mind.”</p><p>When he came, it was with a sharp cry and shaking arms. Steve watched him, filled with a great surge of love, and understood, just for a moment, what it meant to feel truly out of control of himself. He had succumbed to the delicious inevitability of pleasure earlier, but watching Bucky take his pleasure and let it drown him lit a different kind of fire in him. The precisely straight slope of his nose, the plump bow of his upper lip, his cheekbones touched with a furious flush. Each detail was a mark on the page of Steve’s love, vulnerable, precious and so powerful that it almost rendered him completely frozen. But he let his fingers continue their caresses, letting the ruler fall from his hand and brought Bucky’s face to his own, entirely careless of the mess they were covered in, or the way Bucky’s lust wracked limbs lay awkwardly against him. Their kiss was lazy and filled with foolish love. The sort that makes the best and worst plans.</p><p>“You have ruined me,” he clasped his love to his chest.</p><p>Bucky smiled against his lips, warm and naked, flayed open. “And you, me,” he sank his lips into Steve’s lower lip.</p><p>The fire crackled merrily, the only thing of real energy left in the room. Steve felt their breaths slow, mingled and hot, their hearts beating slower, but no less strongly. Bucky had come to rest against him, thighs snuggled to his hips, forehead tucked into his shoulder. It was a deep, resonating contentment which settled over their entwined bodies, like a sweet trickle of honey at the end of a bite of bitter almond.</p><p>Eventually, Bucky drew back. Or tried to, Steve pressed his hand to the cool, damp column of his spine, pulling him back in.</p><p>“No,” he pressed a kiss to Bucky’s cheek, tasting the remnants of tears.</p><p>Bucky hummed happily, but slowly began to straighten his limbs, disentangling himself from their embrace. Steve let him, sinking back into his tired sprawl.</p><p>“Unfortunately,” Bucky kissed his lips chastely, one precious hand settled lightly on Steve’s chest, “Unfortunately, I cannot remain held up by you forever. However much I wish it were so.”</p><p>He inspected the sloppy state of himself, rubbing his hands over the splotchy marks left by desktop and ruler, and Steve’s mouth as if he hadn’t noticed any one of them inflicted. Steve watched him from under his lashes, head rested on the ornate carving of the little table which still held the evidence of their misdeeds, the mostly empty bottle oil lying on it’s side, cap forgotten somewhere. “Let me,” Steve took Bucky’s hand, squeezing.</p><p>He sat up to draw his soiled shirt over his head, using it to clean up traces of come, sweat, tears and oil as he found them. Bucky let him, eyes on him all the while.</p><p>Once he was as clean as was possible without the help of warm water or the presence of Bucky’s exceptionally competent valet, Bucky slid free of his grasp. He tottered over to his pile of discarded clothes and began to redress himself layer by torturous layer.</p><p>Many times before Steve had existed in these moments, soaked in the brightness of being in love, and mourned that Bucky had to go. They couldn’t simply do as they pleased, but now he recognised that the frills hardly mattered. The way Bucky returned to him, sprawled as he was, between each layer of neat trussing and pressed kisses to his face, that was what he had. And that was what he would love.</p><p>Before Bucky could reach for his boots, Steve took them in his own hands, rising to stand toe to toe with the man who had been a picture of debauchery just minutes before, but now looked almost ready to take to the grandest ball at the Assembly. His throat lay conspicuously bare, however, the length of his cravat a crumpled mess somewhere outside of their cosy world of firelight.</p><p>Steve slowly knelt down, running his hand down the length of Bucky’s leg to take hold of his ankle. Bucky gently sank his fingers into his hair as he allowed Steve to lift his foot and guide it into its boot. He felt the soft sifting of fingers against his scalp. When both feet were ensconced, he looked up.</p><p>“The things you inspire in me,” he said, “sometimes I don't know how to forgive you for making me feel this way.”</p><p>Bucky looked down at him, bringing his hands to stroke lightly down the edge of his face. “Is that love, perhaps? Finding it in ourselves to simply forgive one another every day.”</p><p>“The things you do to me are entirely beyond forgiveness,” Steve took both of Bucky’s hands in his and kissed them before standing up. “Now tell me when I next get to forgive you.”</p><p>Grey eyes ran down his bare chest, across his shoulder and slowly back up to his mouth. “Tomorrow. Forever. But probably when we dine at the Manse on Wednesday,” Bucky said.</p><p>“Damned to sit through the vicar’s finest while you exist beside me once again. I am truly to be tortured.”</p><p>“I hope I at least make it a pleasant hell,” Bucky kissed him one last time and then turned to go. “I cannot believe I allowed you—begged you even—to work merry stripes on me and now I face the carriage ride home alone.”</p><p>“I’d invite you to stay, but I’ll save that for a day I work you harder,” Steve followed him, catching hold of the back of his neck just before he reached the door and spinning him around to kiss him one last time. When they slowly parted once more, he reached up to run his fingers through the mess of Bucky’s hair. He was permitted to smooth it into some order. “I can permit you going home missing a cravat, but with hair like that there’d be no mystery left for my implacable butler to fathom.”</p><p>Bucky smiled at him. “You really don’t mind, do you.”</p><p>“No. I do mind,” Steve touched the last flush of pink on Bucky’s cheek, “but it’s a pale thing in comparison to you. Having you.”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>Steve kissed him one last time, then reached past him to unlock the door, pulling it open to send his dinner companion home as if this was any old evening in. His lack of shirt would be repaired before any servant took note and Bucky would drive home in the care of his driver and footman, wincing every time the wheels of the carriage rocked on the rough road.</p><p>There was joy in that, and Steve had found it.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>God forbid my Austen scholar mother ever find this.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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